Fade to Play

Last night I was fortunate to attend our first Facebook Developer Garage held at the Vancouver Film School. There were over 100 attendees and included developers, marketing experts, and those interested in apps from a social perspective. Although, some have referred to Vancouver as Techcouver, or Vangroovy, I call Vancouver “Valley North” due to the high quality of talent, creativity, and entrepreneurship that is reminiscent in Palo Alto. Special shouts out to Miss604 who liveblogged it (awesome job) and Kris Krüg (kk+) who live streamed to flickr (cool pics).

The applications demoed:

• Up4 by ActiveState
• Are You Normal by Kinzin (see writeup in 24 hours) [over 100 000 activated in 3 weeks]
• NoteMix by Colin Kierans
• MyBus by HandiMobility
• Opus “Mixx” Music Player and Social Playlists by Donat Group
• Green Gifts by Social Signal
• Scratch and Win by Backstage Technologies
• Classtalk by PeerGlobe

There was a presentation by Jason Bailey of Kick in the Nuts Media on Monetizing Your Facebook Application(s).

Boris Mann and Johnny concluded the evening by discussion OpenID and the Future of Facebook. The presentation focused on how by using OpenID applications should be built for everyone, not just locked inside Facebook.

For a more complete summary of the night, please read:

• Miss 604 (official Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage blog)
• Megan Cole

Relevance: We are talking about Facebook. Well worth attending, socialising, and learning about the Vancouver community’s role in application development there.

For the next 3 days (Oct 18-20) I will be attending and occasionally blogging from Internet Research 8.0. It is the first year I will be attending and I am excited.

The annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers is one of the premier opportunities for scholars and researchers of all things Internet, as well as related new media technologies and practices. It is a forum to meet, present research, network and share ideas in a cooperative, multidisciplinary environment. IR 8.0 Let’s Play will build on seven previous successful conferences and, for the second time, will be held in Canada.

You can view the program pdf here.

I will be low-key at the conference because I need to focus on paper/thesis writing as well as other digital commitments I have. I will be in all the Facebook and tagging sessions for sure. If you see me, peering over my macbook pro, trying to figure out how my camera works, or wandering around looking lost with a Starbucks latte, please stop and say ‘hi’.

Relevance: Excellent opportunity to find out about top-quality Internet research.

Join us for Vancouver’s first Facebook Developer (& Designer) Garage – a place for you to explore, get gritty, tinker, experiment, and test out your ideas for new Facebook apps.

Next Tuesday I will be attending the Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage.

Location: The Vancouver Film School (VFS), Digital Design Campus [map]

Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 — 5:30pm-9:00pm

What: FacebookCamp / Facebook Developer Garage is an ad-hoc unconference-style meetup (see Barcamp) for anyone interested in connecting with Facebookers in and around Vancouver to discuss, share and extend your knowledge on how to design, develop and market Facebook services and apps.

Further information:
Facebook Event
Vancouver Facebook Developers
Vancouver Ajax & Web 2.0 Developers Garage
FacebookCampVancouver wiki
Vancouver User Experience Group

If you can’t attend, please go to Miss604 for liveblogging of the meet-up.

Relavance: I know there are alot of innovative people in Vancouver and at the universities in the area, so I expect the demos to be top-quality. Even if you don’t use Facebook, this meetup may give you ideas on creating a stand-alone application. Plus the local digerati will be there so it will be great place to social, network, and talk about why/why not you’re addicted to Facebook.

See you there!!!

Today when I logged into Facebook I was surprised to see this flyer. The question I have is whether this is random or does Facebook know I am a Maple Leafs fan? I have Toronto Maple Leafs listed as an interest in my profile. I also am on a couple of Toronto Maple Leafs fan groups there.

As I am in Vancouver, I don’t understand why I didn’t get a Vancouver Canucks flyer which would make more sense as I am on the Vancouver network.

Could it be that Facebook Flyers are now targeted to specific Facebook members based on their content/activity? Has anyone else received targeted flyers?

Relevance: Trying to better understand Facebook

These are the slides from my September 11th presentation at the UBC Learning Centre for the inaugural session of their Fall 2007 Brown Bag Lunch Series.

An expanded version of my speech is here.

Information about series:

The Brown Bag lunch series is a series of discussions, presentations and hands-on workshops about technology use for teaching, learning, research, everyday use and (hopefully) fun. The sessions are open to all.

For information on future sessions, please visit http://brownbag.notlong.com/

Relevance: I enjoy enlightening members of the UBC and Vancouver community about what’s going on in digital media and why.

Apologies for the lateness in this. Here are the slides from my Artcamp 07 presentation from September 8, 2007 at the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver.

An expanded version of the speech with references is here.

Relevance: I love talking about Facebook and spending the day with members of the art community has helped me understand aspects of creativity within this digital platform.

technorati tags: facebook creativity barcamp artcamp07